Colle Tondo treasure trove

Pietrasanta, località Castiglione

Finds are kept at the Archeological Museum Bruno Antonucci in Pietrasanta.

The five silver denari found at Colle Tondo present a certain variety of effigies. In the Republic Age, indeed, there were effigies showing mythical figures and mythical or historical events according to the personal taste of the single magistrates responsible for the coinage whose name often appears on the reverse of the coins.
So on the head of the Colle Tondo coins we can see represented gods like Apollo, Mars or the personification of Rome; on the reverse, instead, miscellaneous themes are shown: a two-horse charriot drawn by Victory, the winged Pegasus, a galopping horseman or the struggle between a Roman soldier and a barbarian.
This coinage was struck between the last decade of the II^nd century b.C. and the first decade of the I^st century b.C. The more recent specimens are virtually uncirculated: this means that the coins were probably put aside or lost not long after 90 b.C.. That period was marked by the civil war with all its instability and dangers, so more or less consistent sums of money were often hoarded.